First, before I get to exercise, I’ll share an awesome picture that the photographer at my brother and SIL’s wedding got of Lu, as a flower girl.

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There’s a few more pictures of the wedding at http://www.danieljireh.com/blog/.  I can’t wait to see them all.  I love that picture.

Now, exercise! In the past year I haven’t exercised as much as I used to.  I stopped because I was having disordered thinking about it.  I was exercising to burn calories.  I wasn’t having fun, I wasn’t enjoying it-I was exercising to eat more. No bueno.

What I’ve come to realize is that I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY like to exercise.  It makes me happy, like REALLY happy.  Got that yet? Exercise makes me REALLY happy . I no longer use a heart rate monitor to track how many calories I burn (I haven’t in about 5 months) and I exercise because I want to. 

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m doing The Artist’s Way and one part of it, are the “Artist’s Dates”.  Artist’s Dates are 2 hour chunks of time where I’m supposed to do something for myself with myself (and no one else) that foster’s my creativity. Some of my dates? Going to get my make-up done and getting a lesson (and buying said make-up).

A recreation:

Going shopping for myself and only myself.  Wandering the aisle’s of art stores to see if anything catches my eye, trying soccer for the first time, RUNNING.  Yes, running.

When I run, it’s my “me” time.  It’s when I reconnect with me and talk to myself.  A LOT gets done in my head when I run.  It’s one of the reasons I love doing it so much and by myself.  I really like to run by myself.  I like being stuck in that ‘ol brain of mine

How about you?  Do you like to exercise?  If you don’t, do you do it anyway? Do you find other ways to be active?

It’s been CRAZY busy since we last talked and now I’m in Virginia for work. 

On Sunday we watched Tessa so that my sister and her husband could go hunting and fishing.  My brother-in-law is a pilot and they take his plane and go to the “back-country”-you can’t get there with a car.  It was the first time in almost 2 years that they got to get out in the plane, just the two of them.  Tessa has always been with them.  I am SO happy that we got to help out and the girls were utterly adorable. This is why we moved!

Here they are in the morning, both sitting on the bird’s food containers, drinking water.  Right before this, they were scooting the containers around and squealing:

Yes, Lu is still in her PJs and yes that is a necklace around her neck.  Gram and Pop sent her a necklace for her birthday and it is now on her whenever she is awake.

Later that morning, we hopped on our bikes and took the girls to the zoo.  They had a blast!  I have all sorts of cute pictures but alas they are at home.  I did capture this shot on my phone from the ride home:

Poor Tessa was tired.  Lu isn’t quite sure how she feels about being a human pillow 🙂 (Do you see the necklace?)

Lu also always has her purse and “cell phone” with her.  Here she is taking a picture of Mommy with her “cell phone”-it’s an old defunct T-Mobile phone that her sitter gave her.  I was trying to get a picture of the hundreds of butterfly stickers on her chest and she, in turn, was taking a “picture” of Mommy:

Where did this girly-girl come from?  If there was ever a question in my mind about nature vs. nurture, there is no longer.  We have NOT encouraged this behavior.  We don’t discourage it either but purses, necklaces, and obsessions with shoes?  She is a girl, through and through.  That stuff is NOT learned.  Believe me!

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How am I doing?  I’m good.  I’m really good.  I’m continuing to eat gluten, corn, dairy, and meat (sans fish) free. I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t helping.  It is helping.  At the encouragement of my doctor I tried some lamb (my favorite) last week-we were working under the assumption that I’m very allergic to corn so I should try truly grass fed animals.  Big mistake. Big. HUGE.  I got a stomach ache almost immediately and spent the night in the bathroom.  Lovely.

As for my energy level, I ran 10 miles this weekend in 1 hour and 59 minutes.  Like I said on Twitter, Ironman Chelsea would have cried because it was so slow.  Lucy’s Mommy?  Was really proud of herself.  I’m learning NOT to compare me to my pre-Lucy self.  I will get there BUT I was in the best shape of my life when I got pregnant, I had just finished an Ironman for goodness sake!  My half marathon is next weekend and I feel confident that I can finish with a 12 minute mile pace. The 10-miler didn’t make me sore! YAY!

Want to know what has made me sore?  Soccer and mountain biking.  Both of which, I am LOVING.  Absolutely LOVING.  Soccer is such a rush and I love playing on a team.  Mountain biking is fun and I love that Shaun and I have something to do together again.  Just the two of us.  We go during the week at lunchtime and it is awesome.

I love that our move has afforded me the possibility to be so active again.  I haven’t once missed my 2 hour commute.  I love that I get to work from home, see Lucy 20 times more, and work out during the time that I used to spend in the car.  Life is good, really good.

I’d better get to bed.  I have an 8 hour meeting that I’m leading tomorrow and it starts in 7 hours.  *Gulp*

I can remember as a kid REALLY wanting to play soccer but it never seemed to work out.  I used to kick the ball against the garage hoping that I’d become such a phenom that my parents would HAVE to make the time for me to play.  Yeah…that didn’t happen.

Well…

I played my first game of soccer last night!  I joined an adult soccer league here and I’ll play every Monday night.  I was extremely nervous going into the game but I did okay.  It’s a co-ed league and it’s really just an organized pick-up game.  It’s perfect for me to learn.  My team REALLY wanted me to score and tried their hardest to get me to score but I kept getting really flustered.  I did assist a few times and that was fun!  Everyone was surprised that it was my first game ever and I call that a success.  And, HOLY, you run a TON when playing soccer and you run HARD.  There were many times when I felt like puking-but I didn’t!  Overall, I had a blast and I can’t wait until next week.

In other news, I’ve got a lot of catching up to do and numerous people have asked me for pictures.  Are you ready for picture overload?

On August 29th (yes, almost a month ago) we went to the Idaho State Fair!  It was fun!

A loaded potato that Shaun got (it had a breakfast sausage stuffed in the middle?!?!):

I guess it’s actually called a “Tater Pig”:

The girls shared HALF a pound of fries.  They normally don’t sell half pounds BUT it was the last day of the fair and they took pity on me:

My sister got the requisite funnel cake:

Which everyone, but me, enjoyed!

Shaun got a fancy, smancy beer-Fat Tire:

I love that Fat Tire is right next to Pabst:

Next up was the petting farm!

Why, hello mister!

Lissa and Tessa having a good time:

Lucy was a little timid at first but ended up LOVING it!

After washing our hands REALLY well, we went on a pony ride! Tessa’s always up for anything fun!

Here’s Lucy’s first time around:

And her second time:

And her third:

She LOVED it!!!

Let’s see, next up in my pictures is Shaun mowing the lawn with Lu on his back.  It was the day before we left for Pennsylvania and I had a late meeting.  Super Daddy!

Next up on the camera is Pennsylvania!  Shaun’s family lives North Eastern Pennsylvania.  The “big” cities around are Wilkes-Barre and Scranton (yes where The Office is based).  They live about 45 minutes from WIlkes-Barre, in the mountains by lots of lakes.

Here’s Lu at one of them-she played for over 2 hours with almost no interaction from us-she wanted nothing to do with us!  She just wanted to watch the older kids and play with their toys.  She’s getting so grown up!

“Eating” ice cream:

Here’s the lake:

That night we went go cart racing!  Here’s Great Grandma Titus, Gram (Shaun’s Mom), cousin Tyler, and Lu:

95 year old Grandma Titus and Lu:

The guys ready to race:

Aunt Kara and Lucy watching the race:

Yes, there really is a Day Care right next to the Go Cart race track!

Pop and Lucy playing:

We went to the beautiful town of Jim Thorpe:

Look familiar?

The next day we went to Knobles, a theme park where you don’t pay to get in and just pay for tickets.

Lu wasn’t so sure about the carousel:

Nor was Jenna.  Jenna’s Mom, Stephanie and I met when we were pregnant on Baby Center.  She lives near Shaun’s family and I am so happy that I got to see her and Jenna.  Lu is 4 days older than Jenna and Jenna is about a foot taller than Lu!

They had a blast at Knobles. Flying planes:

Going for boat rides:

Driving Cars:

Riding trains:

Flying in a Helicopter with Daddy:

Driving fire trucks!

Big cars with Daddy!

Here’s Stephanie, Lucy, and Jenna:

Knowbles (pronounced Keh-Nob-Els) was a blast!

The next day we went to Uncle Ricky and Aunt Kelly’s where Cousin Tyler showed Lu how to drive his gator!

She kind of got it:

Later on in the week, we went to Hershey to visit Shaun’s friend from High School-Claire and her husband Mike and son Max:

How cute are they?

We then drove to DC to visit our friends from when we used to live there-6 years ago!  I can’t believe it’s been six years!

We went to the National Arboretum:

Which had an amazing exhibit on bonsai trees:

 

 

Butterfly!

Feeding the koi:

At the Baltimore Children’s Museum:

BIG BUBBLE!

And I’ll end with a picture of my Mommy friends that I met up with in Baltimore (again from my Mommy board) Cole, Brya, Ryan, Matthew, Jesi, Me, and the back of Lu’s head.

Whew. Are you still with me?

I’ll be back tomorrow with pictures of the birthday girl.  She’s turning 2 tomorrow!

Man, I wish the weekends were three days long!  But I know that if they were I’d be wishing for four days.

Yesterday, while Shaun was mountain biking, Lucy and I went down to Richard and Elaina’s for breakfast and then to watch Elaina’s soccer game.  We had a blast!  Lucy LOVES balls and loved watching soccer!

She sat up the entire 90 minutes we were there!

I was going from 8 am (Shaun let me sleep in!) until 9 pm yesterday.  I literally did not stop all day.  It was an exhausting but good day.

Here’s today’s picture!

My two favorite people 🙂

Things are going really well and I’ve been really happy.  I have to say that the last 7 months have been  happiest of my life, they’ve been hard too but oh so happy.  I really don’t have much else to say right now.  🙂